The Photograph

Jul 22, 2016 — Two pieces, written by director King Hu, that were originally published as part of a 1975 press kit for the Cannes Film Festival.

Oct 9, 2015 — Agnès Varda keeps popping up in the most unexpected places.

Sep 23, 2015 — Bruce Beresford draws on a controversial episode of Australian colonial history from 1901 to create an electrifying drama that questions the moral certitude of war.

Feb 28, 2014 — The Great Beauty, which is up for best foreign-language film at Sunday’s Academy Awards, feels at times like a glorious throwback to a time when art-house cinema reigned. Feeling nostalgic for that era, when films by the great directors of world...

Jun 26, 2013 — On the life and work of the famous Czech author, and the pleasures and challenges of translating him.

Dec 11, 2012 — Philip Glass’s experimental operas and symphonic works of the 1960s and ’70s laid the groundwork for his hypnotic Qatsi scores.

May 9, 2012 — The paradox of the biopic is that the need to give fictional characters the kind of messy, defining behavior that makes them ring true—makes them, in the vocabulary of development, “relatable”—is usually overlooked when an actual life is condensed into...

Sep 8, 2009 — “It’s not my fault that I’m Japanese . . . yet it’s my worst crime that I am!” The words are those of Kaji, hero of The Human Condition (1959–61), but in his anguish and existential despair, he also speaks...

May 9, 2005 — Les Blank’s documentary examines the interaction of premodern tribal existence with European modernity, epitomized by a movie narrative about the invidious clash of brute nature and a singular ego bent on his own mission of cultural enlightenment.

Mar 29, 2022 — About half an hour into love jones, Theodore Witcher’s romance from 1997 starring Larenz Tate and Nia Long, the two main characters amble along a Chicago block as raindrops fall, soft but insistent. The colors are warm, naturalistic—browns, mauves, and...